To Felicity’s surprise, Asher smiled, shaking his head. “You think I’ll censure you? Accuse you?”
“I deserve no less,” Lady Stenfax said, her voice shaking.
“No, that isn’t what I’m about to do. Lady Stenfax, at the time this all occurred, I was angry with you, yes. But I’m older now. I’ve seen so much. I wish you had been more open to me. I wish you had seen value in me. But I understand on some level why you did what you did. You wanted to protect your daughter.” He looked at Felicity. “Which is the most noble of motivations. Certainly, I have done some foolhardy things in the same pursuit.”
“But it is my fault that she ended up with a man who abused her. Who tried to…tokillher,” Lady Stenfax sobbed.
Asher turned on Felicity. “You once told me you blamed me for your marriage. But that changed, didn’t it?”
She caught her breath. “Yes,” she admitted. “I wanted to blame you, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“Whose fault was it?” he pressed.
She looked at her mother, her shoulders bent, tears streaming down her face. She was broken by what she’d done. By the blame she now shouldered. And Felicity so understood that pain. She had felt it herself, carrying guilt on her own back for so long. She knew its weight. Its damaging power.
She didn’t want to leave it on her mother’s shoulders.
“Barbridge,” she whispered. “Theonlyperson there is to blame for what was done to me is the person who did it. I blame my husband.”
Lady Stenfax lifted her head. “B-but I pushed you into his arms.”
“And had you known what a monster he was, would you have done so? Would you have protected me if you knew what he would do?” Felicity asked, and knew the answer even before her mother spoke.
Lady Stenfax’s eyes lit up with a flame of anger and protectiveness that Felicity had never seen before. Her jaw set as she said, “I would have killed him myself if I had known he had hurt you. I would have gone into the deepest ruin rather than put you in his path.”
Felicity stared at her. As a child, she had considered her mother her champion, but somehow over the years they had been cut away from each other by the secrets they both kept. Now she saw that same champion. Perhaps not perfect, but filled with love and good intentions.
She moved forward and caught her mother’s hands in hers. “You should not have done what you did that night,” she said.
“I know, I apologize to you both,” Lady Stenfax whispered. “Even though I know it is too late for that.”
“But because of it, Asher got an education. He became a success and a man. And I became…me,” she said. “Less foolish than before. I cannot only blame the things that happened—I must also find the good in them and see how they shaped me and helped me to this place.”
Lady Stenfax’s eyes were eyes wide and uncertain. “Does that mean you can…forgive me for my interference?”
“I…can,” Felicity said, embracing her mother tightly. She felt Lady Stenfax buckle, and clung to her, keeping her upright as her mother wept into her shoulder.
After they stood like that for a moment, Lady Stenfax wiped her tears and then slipped away to move toward Asher. “And what of you, Asher…Mr. Seyton. Canyouever forgive me for my actions that night?”
His expression gentled and Felicity’s heart soared at the goodness of him. The generosity of spirit that was unlike any she had ever experienced. He held out a hand to Lady Stenfax and she gripped it with both of hers.
“I forgave you a long time ago,” he said.
Lady Stenfax’s shoulders rolled forward in relief. “Thank you.”
Felicity smiled as her mother released him and stepped back. She almost looked like a new person. And Felicity understood that. She, too, felt reborn now. Lies had been burned away, betrayals answered. The future, for the first time in years, looked bright.
And it was all because of Asher that it was true.
“Well, now that it is all out,” Lady Stenfax said. “It seems I have a great deal to do.”
“What do you mean?” Felicity asked.
“The fact that everyone has kept me in the dark about all this is proof that I have not lived up to my duties as matriarch of this family,” Lady Stenfax said. “It is something I must work on. I think I’ll speak to Elise about it. There is a steel in her that I could learn from.”
“Don’t underestimate your own steel, my lady,” Asher said.
Lady Stenfax looked at him with kindness and then sighed. “But right now I think I shall go lie down. This has been a day of upheaval for us all.”
